


Dear Hopeless

by Wherethereissmoak



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 15:58:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12369144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wherethereissmoak/pseuds/Wherethereissmoak
Summary: Through letters, Oliver and Felicity have a connection before they ever officially meet.





	Dear Hopeless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hope-for-olicity (Jacq)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacq/gifts).



> This is a fic for my lovely friend hope-for-olicity who is having a case of the sads this week. I hope this cheers you up my friend! The end of this is so fluffy, just the way you like it! 
> 
> Also, I had no beta and my kids were running around so I wrote this in various spurts today. Please ignore all typos and pretend they are just brilliant new ways to form words.

He doesn’t know why he did it. Maybe it was the years of loneliness. Maybe it was because he was so close to home, but not allowed to reach out to his family.

Oliver didn’t have much time before he had to get out of Starling City and continue their mission with ARGUS, but he used some of it to look through the file the girl in the glasses had left on the executive’s desk. The girl who had called him cute, even if he was “dead.”

He saw a Post-It note stuck to the file, signed by one “Felicity Smoak.” Fe-li-ci-ty Smoak. It suited her somehow. Oliver stole the note and stuck it into his pocket.

Later, on the plane back to China, he started writing a letter. He poured out all his thoughts and feelings about not being able to take care of his sister, of being trapped in his current situation without the ability to go home. He was careful not to include any identifying information. But it felt nice to talk to someone, even if it was in the form of a letter.

When he got to China, he looked up Ms. Smoak’s address online and mailed the letter. He had signed it “Hopeless.”

After that, he couldn’t stop himself. He wrote her every day. Sometimes he mailed them every day, or if he was in a situation, like when he was on Lian Yu with Taiana, he dropped a whole bunch in the mail when he was near civilization. Sometimes his letters were written on napkins or little scraps of paper, but he always wrote them.

He never identified himself as Oliver Queen, but he did share some of the things he was going through. He wondered what Felicity thought of these letters from a stranger. His stories probably seemed to fanciful to believe. He didn’t put a return address on the letters, so she couldn’t mark them as “return to sender.” Oliver wondered if they creeped her out and she changed her address to a P.O. Box to avoid receiving letters from him.

All he knew was that having someone to write to help him get through the long days and nights on Lian Yu and Russia.

When he returned for good to Starling City, he forced himself to stay away from her. Oliver had his mission as the Hood to think about, and he didn’t have time for the complications that she would bring into his life. He also didn’t want to put her in any danger.

Still, when he needed information off a bullet-ridden laptop, she was the person he sought out. The image he had held of her in his head was nothing compared to the reality. She was so beautiful. All joy and sunshine.

And her babbles…captivated him. It was refreshing to be around someone where he wasn’t expected to talk much. He felt safe with her, because she already knew most of his secrets. Even if she had no idea that she did.

Ove the following months, their friendship grew and she joined the vigilante team as their tech advisor. She never let on that she figured out that he had written her. In fact, she never mentioned anything about getting letters from a mysterious stranger. Maybe she had found a way to stop receiving them after all.

He found himself continuing to write to her, but not mailing them this time. It was while writing one letter that he realized he had fallen in love with her. He told her in the letter that he would never send. And he would never tell her in real life, because he couldn’t live the life he led and be with someone he cared about.

***

Felicity doesn’t know how “Hopeless” got her name and address – but she looked forward to his letters. The first few had freaked her out, sure. It wasn’t like it was a normal thing to get letters from a strange man, but something about them drew her in.

She tried to piece together information enough to go online and figure out who he was, but he always seemed to evade her. Felicity reread his stories over and over again, practically memorizing them. When months would go by and she didn’t receive one, she felt a sense of panic and loss, but then all of a sudden she would receive a huge batch in one day.

He told her stories of being part of a secret organization called ARGUS, of bringing down a drug organization on an island in the China Sea, and even being involved in the Russian mafia.

And then suddenly, the letters stopped. Felicity is worried for months. Only meeting Oliver Queen and joining his vigilante team distracted her from the sorrow that something might have happened to her mysterious “Hopeless.”

There was a time or two where she thought for a moment that maybe Oliver himself was the letter writer, but no, that made no sense. He would have told her by now…right?

It wasn’t until they went to Russia to rescue Digg’s wife that she pieced it all together. ARGUS…Bratva…it had to be him. Her heart flooded with so many emotions. Relief that the stranger that she had come to care for was safe. Hurt that he had befriended her this whole time and not told her the truth.

Oliver must have seen the look in her eyes the moment she realized, because panic filled his own expression.

“Felicity…”

“Don’t…I need to…I need…time,” she said. She gave him the silent treatment the entire way back to Starling as he stared at her with puppy dog eyes.

As they were leaving to go to their respective homes, she stopped him with a question.

“Why, Oliver? Why me?”

He told her briefly of the first time he had seen her, how lonely he was at the time and how he came to write to her. Felicity’s heart clenched at his words, broken for the lost man that he was and trying to reconcile him with the man who stood before her. The man she had fallen in love with over the past year, but had never been able to admit to herself.

“Why didn’t you tell me when you got back?”

He was quiet for a moment, and Felicity started to get nervous about his answer. Was she not what he was expecting when he finally met her in person? Had her babbles ruined the image of her he had built in head?

“Because of the life I lead…I thought I couldn’t be with someone I really cared about,” Oliver said softly.

She nodded dully at his words. So he cared about her, but not enough to tell her the truth.

“Felicity, I was wrong, and I hope you can forgive me,” he said as she walked to her car.

“I may be able to, but I just need time to think about all this.” And with that, she head home where she knew a pint of ice cream and a bottle of wine would be waiting for her.

She reread his letters all again that night. Felicity knew them all by heart, but it was different reading this time picturing Oliver’s voice in her head as she read. She broke over and over again at the words he wrote about his pain and suffering.

Felicity cried a little before getting up and walking determinedly toward her closet. She pulled out a box she kept there. What Oliver did not realize was that she wrote him every day too after receiving his first couple of letters. She didn’t have a return address, so she kept them.

At first, they had just been responses to his letters, but after time they sort of became a diary of her life. She poured out all her thoughts and feelings into them. Felicity wiped the last of her tears, and opened the door to head to the lair to give them to Oliver.

She was surprised to see Oliver waiting on the other side of the door, with his arm raised to knock, a similar box in his other hand.

***

Oliver studied Felicity as she stood there speechless after opening the door. Her eyes were red-rimmed from tears, and it hurt him that he had caused her any pain.

“I know you wanted time to think about things, but I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed before making a decision about keeping me or throwing me to the curb.”

Felicity cocked her head at him. “Keep you?”

He nodded. “Yes, keep me. Please, read these letters too, you will understand.”

She stared at the box. “You wrote me more letters?”

“I wrote you every day, even after I came home.”

“Even after we met?”

“Especially after we met. I said a lot of things I didn’t feel like I could say outloud to you.”

Felicity nodded again and tentatively reached for the box, and then he noticed the box in her own hands.

“Felicity – what’s that?”

“Oh! I wrote you to!”

“What? When?”

“Every day since just about the time you started writing me. You just didn’t give an address to send them to, so they are all in here.”

Oliver stared at the box in shock.

“You wrote to me?”

He took the box from her and held it gently. Many emotions ran through him. He thought of all those years that he had felt alone. That entire time, she had been here, writing to him, thinking of him. It made him love her even more.

“Felicity…”

“Before we talk, I think we should read.”

He nodded and turned to go, but Felicity, grabbed his sleeve. “No, here. I will go in my room and read your letters and you can sit here and read mine.”

He grinned. “That’s going to take a really long time.”

She smiled back at him, and his heart skipped. “I’m not going anywhere – are you?”

“Never.”

So they sat and read for hours, only breaking for snacks from time to time. Oliver couldn’t believe the glimpse he was getting into Felicity’s soul as he devoured her letters. Everything he knew and loved about her was magnified now. She signed all her letters as “Hopeful,” in such a wonderful contrast to the “Hopeless” he had signed his with. Felicity really was his hope, and his joy.  

He was nearly halfway done when he heard a screech come from Felicity’s room. “Felicity? Are you okay?”

Her bedroom door swung open. “Oliver Queen! You love me?”

Oliver did not know how to respond because for some reason the expression on her face was not giving away her feelings on the matter.

“Don’t deny it now, Mr. ‘I can’t be with someone I care about’ – it’s right here in your handwriting. You love me!”

“I…do,” he said hesitantly, not knowing if she was going to return the sentiment or kick him out of her apartment.

And then her arms were around his neck and she was kissing him. “I love you too,” she whispered as she pulled away. When he finally had time to recover, he returned the kiss with fervor.

It took them several hours to get back to reading their letters.

Oliver continued to write her a note every day after that, but he often changed how he signed them.

Hopeless…ly devoted

Hopeless…ly in love

Hopeless…ly yours

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think!


End file.
